


But Then You Found Me (And Everything Changed)

by Lily_Padd_23, supernatural_mondler (starzinoureyes)



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Fluff, Living Together, M/M, Mentions of Smut, Naked Cuddling, Post-Canon, bc theyre constantly horny lets be real, henry is in love, soft, this is just soft, which is in no way relevant to the plot of the story but important information nonetheless, yup thats right theyre naked this whole time basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 18:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19874044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily_Padd_23/pseuds/Lily_Padd_23, https://archiveofourown.org/users/starzinoureyes/pseuds/supernatural_mondler
Summary: Henry accidentally asks a question.  Alex is more than ready with the answer.





	But Then You Found Me (And Everything Changed)

**Author's Note:**

> this stemmed from a rp between myself and lily_padd_23 because firstprince has decided to take over our entire brain cell (one brain cell...we share it), so alex's dialogue is hers, and henry's dialogue and thoughts are mine!
> 
> also, i need to stop doing things at 1:30 in the morning, so any mistakes are the result of that
> 
> title from "choose you" by sara bareilles, which is, as lily pointed out to me, THEM

Living with Alex was better than anything Henry could have possibly imagined.

For so many years, and then so many months, he had made his peace with the fact that for better or worse, there was an ocean between them. He used to fantasize, sometimes, what it could be like to allow himself this. To come home at the end of the day to a boy with bright eyes and a bright smile, waiting for him on the couch of the modest residence they would share.

It had been a fuzzy image at first, when he had just known Alex from a distance, had just known the very public side of him that anyone could read in the tabloids. The eyes. The smile. The hair that Henry had often pictured running his hands through. The more time they spent together, the more details fell into place. The glasses Alex only wore around his closest friends and family. The sleepy look in his eyes at the end of a long day. The set of his mouth when he tried not to give into that sleepiness. The old faded Cowboys t-shirt that Alex swore he only wore because he had gotten it for free, and not because he cared about the team. The sound of his voice when he was tired, or hungry, or frustrated, or horny, the tells that would allow Henry to tend to his every mood. Learning Alex in this way…it was as if his greatest dream had come true.

And all that…couldn’t possibly come close to the actual feeling of living with Alex. He didn’t get to just know him, he got to experience him every single day. No matter how happy, or sad, or tired, or frustrated he was, spending the night in Alex’s arms, or with Alex in his, had become a constant. Henry often found himself counting down the seconds until the end of the day, when he could finally return to the brownstone they now shared and fall into his boyfriend’s arms.

He happened to know Alex did the same, because the other man’s countdown usually took place over text. Constantly. To the point where Henry had to physically shut his phone in a drawer if he had to get any work done. 

Not that he would ever admit it to Alex, but he secretly loved it. Henry’s greatest fear—one of them, at least—was that he would pour all of himself into someone who wouldn’t reciprocate. Henry loved hard, and he yearned to be loved the same way in return. And somehow, miraculously, Alex did just that. And he reminded Henry of it every chance he got. Texts from Alex still made Henry’s heart flutter.

There was no “best part” of living together; every damn moment was incredible.

Though, Henry had to admit he was partial to Alex jumping him the moment he stepped through the door. They usually _tried_ to get through dinner first—Alex often even had dinner ready by the time Henry got home. But they had spent entirely too long without each other to deny themselves the ability to tumble into bed on a whim. They were young, it was acceptable.

Henry giggled as he pulled Alex into a kiss after their latest round of early-evening sex, the taste of himself still in his boyfriend’s mouth. 

“Fucking narcissist,” Alex muttered against his lips, smiling.

“Hmm, I think you’d be the expert on fucking,” Henry retorted.

Alex laughed as he fell back against the bed next to him. “You’re ridiculous,” he informed Henry.

“And you’re ridiculously sexy.”

“C’mere,” Alex replied with a smirk, pulling Henry closer to his side.

“Right here, love,” he replied softly.

“Henry…”

“Yes?”

“I love that you’re right here,” Alex admitted quietly, wrapping an arm around Henry’s waist to trap their bodies together, not that Henry would dream of allowing even an inch of space between them.

Henry gave him a fond smile. “We live together now, love. I’m always right here.”

"Just sometimes think about how far away you used to be,” Alex admitted. “And how long every day that we weren't together felt and I just...I can't believe this is our life."

“It’s much better this way, isn’t it?” Henry agreed. “Could never go back to…that.”

“Never,” Alex repeated, nuzzling even closer into Henry’s neck. Henry tightened his own arms around the younger man.

“We’d better hope this nonprofit works out then,” Henry replied. “Gives me a reason to stick around here.”

“Oh, I’m not reason enough?” Alex feigned hurt, but pecked a kiss to his lips so Henry would know that he was only teasing. “It'll work out baby, you're pouring your heart and soul into this and your heart and your soul are both remarkable, so…"

Henry blushed. “You’re terribly sweet. I’m doing my best. Can’t spend the rest of my life as your trophy husband, can I?”

Alex giggled at that. “Husband?” Henry felt himself go red. Shit. They had never…they hadn’t gotten that far yet, and why would they? It had barely been three months that they had been living together, and less than a year that they’d been a public couple. Neither of them was even twenty-five yet, they had ages to go before marriage should be a topic for discussion, right? It had truly just been a slip, Henry hadn’t meant…

“I…you know what I meant,” he huffed. 

Alex hardly seemed fazed. He gently cupped Henry’s face in his hands so that Henry had no choice but to meet his eyes. “Hey. We know it's gonna happen. It's just...you've never said that word before and...I love it."

Oh. That was… _oh_.

“Really?” Henry asked. “It’s not too…?” _Soon? Much? Scary?_

Alex shook his head. “I can’t wait to be your husband,” he replied honestly, and Henry’s heart soared at the way the word sounded coming from Alex’s mouth. 

“Oh,” Henry replied, dumbstruck. “Okay, that’s…good to know.”

“You…didn’t know that?” Alex questioned, grin spreading on his face. “I posed for royal pictures with you! I told you this was forever, baby.”

“No, no, I-I know,” Henry stuttered. “I just…didn’t want to assume…that.”

That was really what it came down to. Henry had known for the better part of five years that Alex Claremont-Diaz was the love of his life; it was only in the last two years that Alex had caught on to that himself. Henry _knew_ that there was no one else he could see himself spending his life with. But he couldn’t allow himself to assume that Alex felt the same way about him, lest his heart be completely shattered if his assumption turned out to be wrong. It was far better to keep his expectations modest and allow every day with his love to bring a new surprise.

"Baby, you're gonna have to give me a pretty fucking marvelous proposal because you've given me a plethora of memories that I don't know how you're gonna top," Alex informed him, kissing his neck. "I'm not saying yes until it's the splashiest, gayest, most ridiculously over the top proposal there has ever been."

Henry smiled fondly. “Sounds like I’ve got my work cut out for me then.”

"You want to practice right now?" Alex offered.

“Practice?” Henry furrowed his brow in confusion.

"Your pitch."

“Don’t you want it to be a surprise?” Henry asked. “Isn’t that what will make it...marvelous?”

Alex shrugged. "If you think you can get it right on the first shot, then that's your prerogative. But in our history, it usually takes us a few try before we figure things out."

“But not for lack of trying,” Henry reminded him.

Alex smiled softly. "Okay so try. Practice."

Henry exhaled slowly and willed his brain to string together some sort of coherent thought, some expression of words that even came _close_ to the love he felt for the man lying beside him. “Okay, I, umm...Alex, you’ve been an important part of my life for longer than you even realize. And now you’re...the _most_ important part of my life. Your happiness is the only thing that matters to me, because your happiness is my own. I’ve tried life without you, and it is incomparably duller than life with you. So i choose you. I chose to love you forever, if you’ll allow me to. Will you marry me?”

Henry can hear the emotion in his own voice by the end of his impromptu speech, and for a brief moment he sees the emotion reflected in Alex’s eyes. But then the other man schools his features into his trademark smirk and rolls onto his back, away from Henry.

"It's a start," he allows, voice slightly betraying the smug demeanor he’s trying to give off, not that Henry has ever really struggled to see through him anyways.

“Bastard,” Henry groaned, smacking his shoulder playfully. Alex wiggled back into him, and Henry brought his hand to rest gently in the dark tangle of hair at the back of his head. “I’ll work on it. For you,” he added softly.

Alex shook his head "It was perfect," he whispered reverently, letting his guard fall and his emotions spill over. It really had been just a spur of the moment little thing. Henry prided himself on being good with words, he had studied them, after all. His little practice proposal might have been good, but he knew with a little preparation he could _truly_ find the words worthy to describe what the love of his life meant to him.

“I can do better. I’ll get it really right.”

Alex propped himself up on his elbow so that he was looking down at Henry. "Sweetheart, whatever you do will be perfect because it's you.” He gently ran his fingers down Henry’s cheek with a giggle. “I swear to God, you could ask me while you were taking a shit and I'd say yes."

Henry let out a horrified yelp. “I’m going to do better than _that_!” he exclaimed.

Alex chuckled, stroking his hair. "I just want it to give all those kids like us something to celebrate, and all those people who hate us something that will really piss them off. Elton John levels of gay. Just rainbows and pumpkin coaches and just an obscene amount of fanfare. I want them to have to reroute military spending just for this!"

Henry huffed out a laugh before attempting to bring his boy back down to earth. “I can think of a couple potential legal problems with that, but I think I get your vision. And as for gay...we’re already pretty fucking gay baby.”

Alex grinned at that, before quieting down a little, suddenly serious. "You know I don't...actually care about fanfare, right? It's just that in my head we are already engaged, so I figure...since we have a platform, we may as well use it to just _flaunt_ it."

Henry smiled fondly. “Well, I happen to love flaunting you, so...”

Alex’s answering smile showed dimples, the smile that still made Henry’s stomach tighten delightfully. “Our wedding is gonna be lit!" he exclaimed.

“Hey, at least wait for me to propose before you start planning it!” Henry tried, but Alex was already going and Henry knew better than anyone that it could take a whole army to stop him now.

"Too late sunshine. You're kidding yourself if you don't think I've been daydreaming of being the first man and the first _brown_ man to walk down the aisle at Westminster Abbey."

Henry sighed, defeated, but even he had to admit that Alex’s vision sounded…pretty perfect, actually. “I’ll get you in touch with our event planners then.”

"It's every little boy's dream, H!" he asserted, and Henry didn’t know if _that_ was true, but so long as it was Alex’s dream, that was all that mattered to him.

“Alex?” Henry began, once again attempting to steer the conversation back to the present. 

“Yes, your highness?”

Until Alex, Henry had absolutely detested the thought of a royal wedding. Being present at Phillip’s was bad enough; he couldn’t imagine having all that awful, unnecessary attention directed at him. With Alex though, it didn’t sound…completely terrible. Nothing with Alex could ever be completely terrible. But there was still that little piece of Henry that wanted…normal. He wanted to take Alex and run away, where they could just be _them_ , and get married in some little chapel out in the middle of nowhere, exchanging vows of their own choosing in the presence of just each other, rather than a whole entire tv segment that would be broadcast to the whole world. But Alex wanted the wedding. He wanted all of it, and Henry would give him anything he wanted, and gladly. Also, as nice as eloping sounded, they didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

Of all the directions Henry saw his life going, this wasn’t even close to being one of the options. It still sent a feeling of warmth through him when he thought about being _out_. Not only had he fallen in love with the most amazing man, who just happened to love him back, but the whole world knew it. There had been a time, not too long ago, where Henry had believed that the most he would ever get would be quiet affairs, protected by the dark and a boatload of legal agreements. Business transactions, rather than relationships. Scandalous dalliances to fulfil a physical need, so impersonal that they almost weren’t worth the hassle of it all. He had never met anyone worth the hassle. Alex was. He was worth that and more. Worth so much that Henry was willing to put everything on the line for him. And he’d do it again without hesitation.

But before, Henry never saw romance in his life. He would meet a girl—or, would be introduced to a girl—and court her, marry her eventually, and have children in order to extend on the royal bloodline, or whatever bullshit was expected of him. It would be like reading from a script, himself an actor in his own life. Unfulfilling. Loveless. Ritualistic. He would never have the opportunity to fall in love, _really_ fall in love. He hated it.

Being with Alex was the most romantic thing he had ever experienced. It was the complete polar opposite of the life Henry had imagined for himself just a few years ago. But by allowing their courtship into the light of day, with it came all the other pressures that came with romance in the royal family. All the fanfare. Alex was worth that too. Alex made Henry want to shout his love from the top of Buckingham Palace, into a bullhorn so that everyone for miles would know without a shadow of a doubt that Alex Claremont-Diaz was the love of his life. He would gladly put up with the royal fanfare so long as he got to do that.

If this was how it was going to be, at the very least Henry was going to do it _right_.

“Can you...let me do this for real?” he asked, a bit shakily. “The...proposal thing. I never thought I’d get the chance to do it with someone I...and...I want to really do it. Right. Just...don’t get carried away until I...yeah.”

"Sweetheart, I always get carried away," Alex smiled softly, and Henry knew Alex understood what he was asking.

“I-I know just...please?”

"Yeah, of course. Take your time, baby. My answer is gonna be fuck yes if you ask me tomorrow and it's gonna be fuck yes if you ask me ten years from now. I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with you no matter what, so, there's really nothing you can do about it."

Henry felt something in his chest loosen. He hadn’t really been…worried, per say. But hearing Alex talk so resolutely about the rest of their life together…Henry wanted that more than anything.

“Okay it’ll be...it won’t be ten years from now. I’ll...you’re sure you’re ready? Like, actually ready?” Henry checked one more time. Alex sat all the way up, so he was kneeling over him.

"Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor,” he said seriously. “I am so unbelievably ready to make you Henry Claremont-Diaz-Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor."

Henry blinked up at him in a combination of amusement and terror as he processed the last words out of his boyfriend’s mouth. “Good god, we’re not really hyphenating all of our names, are we?”

"Oh. We are," Alex smirked. "My initials will spell a very weird word."

“That’s just...cruel,” Henry protested.

"Aren't royals supposed to have long names?"

“It’s not long enough for you already?”

"I...don't want to lose my name," Alex admitted quietly, and Henry understood. Henry would…god, he would never take Alex’s name from him. Royal traditions be damned, Henry would take Alex’s name before he made Alex do anything he didn’t want to do.

“We don’t _have_ to take each other’s names,” Henry tried. “or I could...no, I don’t know. I don’t know.” He shook his head in frustration.

"Hey. Now we're REALLY getting carried away," Alex stopped him before he could get too worked up about this thing that wasn’t really even an issue yet. It was barely an issue at all, actually, but Henry’s brain was already trying to make it one. He needed to take a deep breath.

“I know, I know you’re right, sorry,” he shook his head again, this time to clear it. “I’m back now.”

"Don't apologize, sweetheart, we'll figure all that shit out," Alex soothed, plopping back down on the bed and curling into Henry’s side. Henry’s arms went instinctively around him, and Alex rested his head on Henry’s shoulder. "But yes. Yes. I'm ready. I was ready before I even knew I was ready."

“I’m ready too,” Henry told him. “I’ve been ready...I don’t know how long I’ve been ready, but I know you’re it for me. And you’ve always been it for me. And I promise it’ll be...soon.”

Alex giggled. "Like.... How soon?"

“Well I haven’t figured _that_ out yet!” Henry rolled his eyes with a huff. “I just accidentally told you I wanted to marry you like...within the last hour!”

"See, Wales, I didn't realize this was new information."

“I didn’t want to assume!”

"Says the man who grabbed me and kissed me."

Henry blushed again. “That was...ill-advised. If you recall, I didn’t do very well after that.”

"No, you had to do it to help me get my head out of my ass."

“Yeah, but...”

"No buts.” Alex cut him off. “Except this one." He squeezed Henry’s ass causing the other man to let out a startled giggle, which faded into an amused sigh.

“Still I...probably could have handled that better,” Henry admitted. “And from now on, that’s what I always want to do. Be better for you.”

"I could have handled the fact that I was weirdly obsessed with you a lot better, too," Alex countered, and Henry snorted a laugh.

“You could have, that’s true.”

"Too bad I my brain told me that I spent my teenage years stroking your picture in a magazine because I loved hating you and not because loved you."

Henry blinked slowly, brain short-circuiting. “You...stroked my picture in a magazine...?” he asked slowly.

Alex’s cheeks flushed dark. "I hadn't...told you that had I."

“You...had not.”

Alex buried his face in his hands and moaned. "Oh my god, you can never look at me again!” he exclaimed dramatically, but Henry was just fond.

“Baby, that’s so gay,” he giggled.

Alex refused to make eye contact. "There was a picture of you in one of June's magazines, and I'd sneak into her room and...touch your hair," he admitted into his hands.

“Awww you had a crush on me!” Henry taunted. “That’s so embarrassing for you!”

"I just thought you were aesthetically pleasing!" Alex protested.

“And now?” Henry asked, giving his best mock-sexy pout.

"Now I think you're the sexiest most gorgeous most amazing man I've ever known," Alex replied honestly.

Henry blushed. “Hopefully I’ve…grown into myself a bit since that magazine.”

"You've always been beautiful," Alex argued.

“You don’t think you’re a little biased?”

"I thought you were hot even when I thought I hated you, so I'm pretty objective," Alex reminded him.

“You only _thought_ you hated me, apparently,” Henry teased, fulling Alex’s hair playfully. “Your poor little bisexual brain had no idea it was a crush!”

"Now I can touch your hair whenever I want,” Alex asserted. “And it's actually soft instead of just glossy paper."

Henry dipped his head towards him. “All yours baby.”

Alex took the opportunity to nuzzle into his hair, giggling as he inhaled deeply. Henry giggled in response, nipping little kisses at the base of Alex’s neck, now in a perfect position for Henry to give it attention.

"Oh my _god_ I love you," Alex sighed happily.

“I am unbelievably lucky to love you too,” Henry mumbled, not slowing his current task.

"Babbbyyyyy," Alex whined, as Henry’s nips got stronger, certainly leaving marks.

“Hmmmm?” Henry replied innocently.

"I'm getting hard again it's your fault."

Henry released the skin from his mouth and grinned. “How is that _my_ fault?”

"Because you're hot and naked and here," Alex informed him.

“Okay, I’m pretty sure at least two of those three are your fault, actually.”

Alex wasted no more time arguing, pushing Henry onto his back to tackle him with kisses. Henry giggled.

“Is this your way of asking me for sex again?” Alex blinked up at him, long eyelashes falling slowly over dark cheeks in a way that made Henry’s heart flutter. He pretended to sigh, but there was no hiding the fondness on his face. Or the arousal. “Might as well, I’m hard too,” he replied, lifting his hips a bit.

"Oh!" Alex grinned smugly. As if there was any universe in which Henry would have said no.

“Yes,” Henry confirmed. “ Now how do you want me this time?”

"Don't know yet, shut up and kiss me?"

That Henry could definitely do.

**Author's Note:**

> spn_mondler on twitter, supernatural_mondler on tumblr if anyone wants to scream about this book some more (pls do im currently annoying all my friends into reading it bc i cannot and will not stop)
> 
> kudos and comments make my day!


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